


The Stark In Winterfell

by XCVG



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Crack Crossover, Crossover, Don't take it too seriously, Gen, Hilarity Ensues, Humor, Modern Character in Westeros, POV Third Person Limited, just for fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-18 00:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21519115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XCVG/pseuds/XCVG
Summary: After trying and possibly failing to save the world, Tony Stark wakes up in a body that is not his own, in a world that is not his own. The smart thing to do would be to play along. He is a very smart man. Naturally, he doesn't do that and instead kicks over the apple cart on his first day.
Comments: 37
Kudos: 236





	The Stark In Winterfell

**Author's Note:**

> Extremely crack, but surely I’m not the first person to have thought of this. Don’t take it too seriously, it’s meant to be a silly little thing, not a deep serious thing.

Tony Stark woke slowly, gradually making the transition between the haziness of sleep and the clarity of wakefulness. He became aware of his own body first, the clothes against his skin and the bed beneath him. He had one arm around something soft. His wife.

“You know, I had the worst dream,” Tony Stark muttered. “We did the time heist, got the stones, but it went wrong. We ran into ourselves, ran out of particles, jumped all over hell but we almost won. And then-”

“Dream?” the woman asked, in a voice that was _not_ his wife’s.

“Friday, lights.” The lights did not respond, but the woman shifted, and he thought he saw a lock of red hair.

“Ned?” she asked, confused.

“Who?” The name seemed familiar, but he definitely wasn’t Ned.

The woman turned, and he was face-to-face with a middle-aged woman who was definitely _not_ Pepper, nor anyone he knew.

“Oh, god, I am so sorry,” he apologized, bolting out of the bed. He groped for what was hopefully his pants, awkwardly stumbling into them by the dim light streaming in from a shuttered window. “I swear, I don’t know how I ended up here, I do _not_ do this. Anymore.” He paused, taking in his surroundings.

It was not a room he recognized. It wasn’t his house, it wasn’t the Avengers facility, it wasn’t his private jet or a swanky hotel room. In fact, it didn’t look like anywhere he would willingly sleep. The walls were stone, the bed covered in rough fabrics, the door and window shutters made of rustic wood and iron, and there wasn’t a single light fixture in sight.

“Um, quick question, where is here?”

“This is Winterfell. This is our home. Do you truly not remember?” The woman’s face was furrowed in concern. “You must have hit your head harder than we though. I’ll fetch the maester.”

Before he could object, the woman had already dashed out of the chamber.

Tony sighed and fished through his pockets for his phone. Or at least, he tried to. “These are not my pants. Where are my pants?”

* * *

He’d managed to figure out his clothes- clothes that weren’t his- by the time the red-haired woman returned with the maester. Something seemed off, but he couldn’t place it, and once the wizened old man arrived the thought was gone.

Wizened was just about the perfect word for it. With his grey robes and clinky chain around his neck, the man looked like a warlock straight out of a college D&D campaign.

The old man instructed, “Sit still, my lord-”

“ _My lord_? Wait, am I the lord? Is this a castle? Is it _my_ castle?” He paused, taking a moment to consider the somewhat absurd possibility. “Did I buy a castle? Shit.”

“My lord, Winterfell has been the seat of the Starks for countless generations,” the maester explained patiently.

That was news to him. He raised a finger, about to object, then paused and tucked it against his lip. “Huh.”

“Oh, dear. You must have hit your head very hard indeed,” the man muttered.

“He seemed fine last night,” the woman objected.

“You said I hit my head? If I was really unlucky, it could weaken a blood vessel. I go to bed, in the middle of the night, it goes pop, bye-bye memory,” he rattled off. Noticing the confused and shocked expressions, he snapped, “Yeah, I know how traumatic brain injuries work. It’s not my first rodeo. Which says something about my lifestyle, doesn’t it?”

“Your lord husband speaks strangely, but it is the truth,” the maester stated sadly. “There was a knight who fell hard during a joust. He got up and seemed fine, even reveled at the feast that night, but by the next day struggled to utter a single word.”

It wasn’t the little story that got his attention. “Wait, are we supposed to be married?”

The woman looked truly scandalized. “Ned!”

“You must have patience, Lady Catelyn,” the maester urged. “Hopefully, in time, your lord husband will return to his old self, but it may be a very slow process, especially if he has truly forgotten everything.”

On a hunch, Tony asked, “Do you have a mirror?”

Wordlessly, Catelyn handed him a polished piece of brass on a wooden handle. It was a lousy mirror, but it would do. He held it up to his face.

A face that he didn’t recognize at all.

“That is _not_ good.”

* * *

Apparently, he was Eddard Stark. Or Ned- if he had a name like Eddard which he now apparently did he’d go by Ned too. The woman was Catelyn Stark, nee Tully, who was his wife. And he was lord of a castle- a quick walk outside confirmed that it was a castle and also that it was cold- that he had inherited from his father.

The year was 298 AC. After Conquest, not After Christ. They were on a continent called Westeros. He didn’t recognize it.

The problem wasn’t that he didn’t know how this could be happening. The problem was that he did, or at least he had a few ideas. This could be all inside his head. It could be an elaborate illusion, staged with magic or technology or a combination of both. It could be an alien planet. Maybe it was real, because someone reshaped reality into whatever this farce was. Or maybe Tony was the one that was never real at all.

That one scared the shit out of him.

Of course, the universe wasn’t kind enough to give him a chance to think on it. No, instead he was ushered off to the great hall to meet his kids that weren’t his kids, in the hopes of jogging his memory (that he never had).

They were lined up, neatly from tallest to shortest. Or shortest to tallest, depending on which way you were facing. The two young men at the end were about the same height and had the same stoic expression, but one clearly took after Ned and one clearly took after Cate. Next was a teenaged girl in a prim and proper dress, and a younger girl that had clearly been running around in the mud in hers. At the end were two boys, one maybe seven or eight and one closer to Morgan’s age.

He swallowed the bile building in his throat.

“Is it true? Did you really forget everything?” the younger girl blurted out. Her sister tried to shush her, but was far too late.

“Not _everything_ ,” he protested. “Okay, basically everything. You’re… Anna?”

She scowled at him. “I’m _Arya_.”

“Arya. Right. Sorry.” He pointed to the girl next to her. “I want to say… Sarah.”

The girl curtsied. “Sansa, father.”

“I was close,” he defended, burying his chin in his fist for a moment as he tried to remember the little kids’ names. He the most worried about screwing those up, but he’d only had five minutes to memorize half a castle’s worth of names. He shuffled along, toward the end of the line, slowly to buy himself some time. One was a cereal… “Bran. Rickon.”

He turned to Cate, who nodded in approval. The boys smiled at him, but said nothing.

That left the two eldest. Which didn’t add up. Catelyn only mentioned five children. “One of you is Rob.”

The one with Cate’s red hair stepped forward. “I am, father.”

He almost made a quip about how he should be in college, but Ned wouldn’t be into that and they probably didn’t have colleges here anyway.

“Great, what’s that, three out of five?” He glanced at the last child, and then at Cate. “You missed one.”

Her response was curt. “That’s your bastard.”

“Did you hear what your mom called you?” he asked the young man. He then asked Cate, “What did he do, set the castle on fire?” He turned back to the person in question, who now wore a shocked expression on his face. “Did you set the castle on fire?”

“No, Ned, he’s your bastard.” Catelyn said through gritted teeth, emphasizing every word. “Jon Snow.”

“Oh.” He bit back a remark about how they should probably see a marriage counselor if they hadn’t gotten over it after twenty years, but held his tongue. Instead, he gave his son a nod and stepped away.

“There aren’t any other kids you missed and I forgot, are there?” Tony asked the woman who was supposed to be his wife.

She replied icily, “No, that-”

As if on cue, the doors of the great hall burst open, and another young man strode in, a bow and quiver of arrows on his back and a cocky grin on his face.

“Greyjoy!” Rob shouted at the new arrival.

“Theon Greyjoy, your ward,” Cate explained, exasperated.

Tony shot her a look that he hoped said _Are you serious?_

* * *

Arya looked miserable at dinner.

Well, if he was being honest, they all kind of looked miserable, but Arya looked slightly more miserable than the other kids. It was bugging him the whole time. He’d seen that look before, in Morgan and in kids with cancer.

Halfway through their courses of vaguely familiar but somewhat weird food, he lost his patience. He tossed his fork down and clapped his hands together. “All right, spit it out. No, not your food. Not your food! Tell us what’s bugging you.”

“She hates her lady lessons,” Sansa blurted out in what was probably the most stereotypically teenaged voice he’d heard in a while.

“What the hell are lady lessons?” He glanced over at Cate and repeated, “What the hell are lady lessons?”

“Singing, dancing, manners, embroidery, all the things a lady wife should know to properly serve her husband,” she answered simply.

He dropped his head into his hands and sighed deeply. He couldn’t imagine forcing Morgan into a misogynistic idiot’s mold of a lady, not least because Pepper would probably kill him. His real kid and his real wife, not the ones belonging to someone else-

“Ned?” Cate asked, suddenly concerned.

Pushing thoughts of home back, he ignored his wife and asked Arya, “What would you rather be doing?” Quickly, he added, “No, come on, tell me. I’m not mad. Well, not at you.”

“I want to train with a sword and bow,” the girl in question said. “But you won’t let me.”

Oh. “Aren’t you a little young for that?”

“Bran gets to,” she protested. “And he’s ten! I’m a year older!”

He turned to Cate and asked in a stage whisper, “Is that normal?”

“Most highborn boys train from an early age. In these times, they will likely have to lead armies someday,” she answered, a tinge of sadness in her voice.

He asked the obvious question. “What about girls?”

“Ladies do not lead armies!”

Arya objected, “Visenya Targaryen-”

“It’s settled,” Tony stated firmly, silencing the argument. He failed to hold back his smirk. “If Bran gets to play with swords, Arya gets to play with swords. I decree it.”

“Ned…” Cate complained.

“Anyone else shoehorned into medieval gender roles they hate? Sandra, do you want to join your sister? Jon, do you secretly tap-dance in your room? Singing lessons for Robb?” he suggested, unwilling to back down and instead taking it even further. “I’m serious. I’ll make it happen.”

“Ned!” Cate shouted, as Sandra looked on horrified, Arya and Bran laughed, and Robb suppressed a chuckle of his own.

“What about you, Cate? Any suppressed childhood dreams? Cookie store? Rock band?”

“I do not wish to store cookies of have a band of rocks, whatever that is,” she replied angrily. “How can you allow our daughter to play at war?”

He shrugged. “Why not? Bran gets to.”

She glared daggers at him, as if she had a response on the tip of her tongue, but held it. In fact, she did not say another word for the rest of the meal.

That was probably not a good sign.

* * *

Eddard Stark had been quite the swordsman, apparently defeating the legendary Arthur Dayne, as if that was supposed to mean something to him. Some of the men, his sons included, were eager to find out if he still had it.

That was how he found himself out in the yard some time around noon after probably the worst night’s sleep he’d had in years, and how he found himself on his ass five minutes later.

Unfortunately, he had not magically gained Ned’s prowess in swordsmanship as he had hoped. Tony didn’t really do swords. In his old life, he’d gotten his ass kicked by Clint and Natasha before deciding he’d stick to repulsors for good.

Double unfortunately, this world didn’t have repulsor tech. It didn’t even have electricity. Given enough time and resources, he could build the whole thing up from scratch again. But that would take time, and he was feeling mighty vulnerable in a world that was at least as, if not more, dangerous than the one he’d left.

So he started with the formula that every kid who’d ever blown their eyebrows off had ingrained in their memory: 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, 10% sulfur. Getting the charcoal was easy. Getting the sulfur could have been a little harder, but he found some in his witch doctor’s stash and nabbed it.

It was the potassium nitrate that was the problem. He couldn’t find anything labelled saltpeter or niter. If he had nitric acid, he could make it from wood ash, but he didn’t. Once again, given time, he could create it one way or another, but once he was in a building mood, patience went out the window.

After pondering it for a while, he decided to throw caution to the wind and try everything that looked, smelled, or was labelled vaguely like an oxidizer that he could find. After three fizzles, a smoulder, and four total failures to ignite, he finally got a satisfying bang.

A bang that was apparently loud enough for the witch doctor to come knocking. Well, either that or he’d finally checked his supplies and found half of them missing.

“My lord-“

He cut the man off, shaking the half-full bottle in his hand. “We’re gonna need more of this.”

* * *

Tony just couldn’t help but push his (Ned’s?) wife’s buttons. He wasn’t _trying_ to, it was just that everything was upside down and backwards and she was usually the closest person when he tried to flip things back over into some semblance of order.

He’d managed to make it one extremely awkward night and most of a day before having what probably looked like a psychotic break to everyone who still thought he was Nedward Stark, High And Mighty Lord Of Winterhold. He was in bed with Cate, getting ready for another extremely awkward night, thinking about his family. Well, Ned’s family. Not his actual family. Well, them too. Kinda.

The whole thing was very confusing and he was still not okay with it in the slightest.

“Cate, why is our son sleeping with the servants?” he asked, then realized what he’d just said and immediately backtracked. “Wait, I phrased that wrong. Why is Jon’s bedroom on the other side of the castle?”

“Ned, he’s not _our_ son,” Cate replied sharply. “He’s your bastard.”

“And I don’t know why you married me if you weren’t okay with me having a child from a previous relationship,” he shot back, unable to help himself. He threw his hands into the air. “I don’t know why I agreed! Was it a shotgun wedding?”

She gasped in shock. “Ned, we were betrothed-”

“Sorry, that was going too far. We clearly had a loving marriage, the kids aren’t _that_ screwed up. Sorry. Look, I don’t remember anything before today. Whatever I did, I’m sorry, I am, but I don’t know what I did or why I did it,” Tony said, trying to reassure the wife that wasn’t his that the kid that wasn’t his was- yeah, he could already feel the headache coming on. “Come on, help me out here.”

Cate frowned, bit something back, and sighed.

In a singularly unnatural motion, he grabbed her hands and asked softly, “Where’d this kid come from? What did I do that was so bad that we haven’t gotten over it two decades later?”

Reluctantly, she explained. She started with how things were before Robert’s Rebellion, when Ned was fostering at the Vale along with Robert Baratheon, whom his sister Lyanna was betrothed to-

“I have siblings?” he exclaimed, sharply enough to make Cate jump. In truth he hadn’t even thought to ask. Tony was an only child. “Nobody told me this. Why did nobody tell me this?”

“You _had_ siblings,” Cate answered patiently, though it was probably a forced patience. “Of them, only Benjen still lives. He went to the Wall and took the Black.”

“He did what?” he asked with a laugh, unable to think of any explanation for those words that wasn’t incredibly dirty. Seeing the serious look on her face, he wiped the smile away. “Sorry. Just keep going, I’ll ask someone about the black wall thing tomorrow.”

She did as she was bidden, explaining the fateful events as best she could. Of the tourney where smiles died. How Lyanna had been kidnapped, how Rickard and Brandon had gone south and never returned, murdered by the Mad King. Of the war, of Robert’s fight with Rhaegar at the Trident, of the sack of King’s Landing, and of the Tower Of Joy where Ned had been too late.

And then he started laughing. Not just a chuckle, but full, on, face-in-hand body-shaking hilarity.

Cate looked perplexed and probably more than a little angry. “What? What could possibly be funny about this?”

He couldn’t believe nobody had figured it out. Apparently, he wasn’t just one of the smartest men on Earth, but one of the smartest men on Westeros, too. “Did I ever say anything, even hint at the possibility that Jon isn’t my biological son?”

She answered reluctantly. “When you first returned, I asked if he was not truly yours. I asked, I hoped, that he was Brandon’s bastard. You swore to me that Brandon would not dishonor me-”

“No, no.” He shook his head and gestured with a finger. “Not Brandon. Lyanna.”

“What?”

“Okay, let me run this by you. She falls in love with teenage dream Rhaegar Targaryen at the tournament. She doesn’t want to marry Robert Baratheon- can’t blame her for that- and Ray is completely incapable of being the responsible adult in this situation. So our lovebirds run off to have their happily ever after. Everyone else loses their shit. We call that Robert’s Rebellion.”

“Lyanna was _abducted_ by Rhaegar Targaryen,” Cate forcefully reminded him.

“Seriously? There are so many problems with that.” He waved his hand, as if it would wave said problems away, and conceded, “Fine, whatever, maybe she was kidnapped. Not my point, it works either way.”

By this point Cate was basically a ball of exasperation. “Ned…”

“They do the thing that young lovebirds do, without protection, Ray knocks Lya up. So he hides her away up at the top of a tower like Princess Fiona. Bob kills Ray, we trash King’s Landing, I go to find Lya,” he explained. He waved a hand. “Are you following? You have figured this out, right?”

“By the gods…”

“Lyanna dies at the Tower of Joy, but it’s not a sword that kills her. Maybe she bleeds out, or gets puerperal fever from a doctor who thinks washing his hands is for suckers,” he shrugged, probably more nonchalantly than was appropriate. “I take Jon back with me, and somehow convince everyone he’s not the lovechild of the Silver Prince and the missing sister I’d gone to look for. Everyone buys it despite the incredibly suspicious timing.”

“Are you saying that Jon is a _Targaryen_?” Cate asked, shocked. “Ned, the king! If he knew you had one under your roof, he would kill him, and perhaps you as well.”

He offered no response.

“Ned?”

“I need to sleep on this.” And with that, he flipped over, closed his eyes, and attempted to go to sleep.


End file.
